Preliminary Evaluation of Thematic Mapper Image Data Quality

Thematic Mapper (TM) data from Mississippi County, Arkansas, and Webster County, Iowa, were examined for the purpose of evaluating the image data quality of the TM which was launched on board the LANDSAT-4 spacecraft. Preliminary clustering and principal component analysis indicates that the middle infrared and thermal infrared data of TM appear to add significant information over that of the near IR and visible bands of the multispectral scanner data. Moreover, the higher spatial resolution of TM appears to provide better definition of the edges and the within variability of agricultural fields. The geometric performance of TM data, without ground control correction, was found to exceed expectations. The modulation transfer function for the 1.65 m band was found to agree with prelaunch specifications when the effects of the GSFC cubic convolution and the atmosphere were removed. The band to band registration for the bands within the noncooled focal plane was found to be better than specified. However, the middle infrared and thermal infrared, which are on a separate cooled focal plane were found to be misregistered and were significantly worse than prelaunch specifications.